As the country continues to suffer from appalling electricity, Blueprint has gathered that Nigeria’s electricity national grid suffered another collapse on Monday, plunging many homes into further darkness.
The grid, which is being managed by the government-owned Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has continued to suffer system collapse over the years amid a lack of spinning reserve that is meant to forestall such occurrences.
Taking to its social media handle on Monday to announce the collapse, Eko Electricity Distribution Plc, one of the nation’s distribution companies, disclosed that the grid collapsed at 10:40 am on Monday.
“Dear esteemed customer, we regret to inform you of a total system collapse on the national grid at 10:40 am today, leading to outages across our network. We are closely monitoring the situation with our TCN partners to determine the cause and a timeline for resolution,” the Disco said on its Twitter handle.
“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience as we will keep you updated on the situation, Thank you for your understanding,” it added.
Blueprint reported that another Disco, Jos Electricity Distribution Plc, announced to its customers that “there is a power outage in all our franchise states due to system collapse nationwide.
“We will provide an update shortly. Thank you for bearing with us,” it said on Twitter.
Also, Enugu Electricity Distribution Plc via its Twitter handle confirmed the collapse.
Emeka Ezeh, Head, Corporate Communications, EEDC said they were waiting for feedback.
“The Enugu Electricity Distribution PLC (EEDC) wishes to inform her esteemed customers in the South East of a general system collapse which occurred this morning, Monday, 14th March, 2022 at 10:40 am.
“This is the reason for the loss of supply currently being experienced across the network. Consequently, all our outgoing feeders are out and supply to our customers in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo States are affected by this development.”
“We are on standby and awaiting a signal from the National Control Centre (NCC) for restoration of supply,” the statement said.
According to the Executive Secretary of the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC), the coalition body of GenCos, Dr. Joy Ogaji, Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) Plc are responsible for the appalling power situation due to its refusal to fulfill its obligations to the GenCos as contained in the Power Purchase Agreements (PPA).
In a detailed breakdown, the APGC Chairman disclosed that NBET owed the GenCos N214.93 billion in 2015; N273.32 billion in 2016; N236.47 in 2017, N264.08 billion in 2018, and N256.97 billion, N266.01 billion and N120.25 billion in 2019,2020 and 2021 respectively.
Consequently, Dr Ogaji noted that the humongous debt has hampered the ability of the GenCos to function optimally regarding maintenance and power distribution while clarifying that if the debts were paid, the GenCos could generate 9,000MW immediately.
The Head Corporate Communication, NBET, Henrietta Ighomrore explained that only five power generation companies with active Gas Purchase Agreement were paid for unused capacity.
According to her, claims by Dr. Ogaji that the GenCos have the capacity to generate 9,000MW were not accurate as inspections by NBET have shown that the capacity does not exist.
